$1.9M fine for downloading songs

[Lionel Ritchie]

From CNN
-- A federal jury Thursday found a 32-year-old Minnesota woman guilty of illegally downloading music from the Internet and fined her $80,000 each -- a total of $1.9 million -- for 24 songs.

Sounds about fair considering the debased filth she was accessing online ...

Thomas-Rasset downloaded work by artists such as No Doubt, Linkin Park, Gloria Estefan and Sheryl Crow.

Read On (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.download.fine/index.html?eref=rss_topstories)

[John83]

Holy ****.

I just looked this story up on slashdot (every story like this appears on slashdot). One interesting comment:
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1274139&cid=28383371

Or there's another way to look at it. Thomas was caught with her pants down, she's clearly guilty, and she did everything she could to antagonize the system.
1. Like all RIAA defendants, she was offered the chance to settle for a few thousand. She refused and goaded the RIAA into taking her to court.
2. Once in court, she played games by lying about the circumstances behind her missing hard disk drive. She, nonetheless, continued to protest her innocence despite overwhelming evidence she wasn't.
3. She lost in court, was given a penalty that while high, was actually on the lower end of the possible outcomes. Nonetheless she could have appealed the penalty, and would probably have had a fair hearing, but decided instead to appeal the ruling that she was guilty instead on the basis of a dubious technicality which was unlikely to change the final jury verdict.
4. She's lost in court a second time. This time, she was caught being blatantly dishonest. The jury is almost certainly looking at this seeing someone try to mislead them, who's wasted their time with a pointless retrial over something she's clearly guilty of.
Now, put aside your views on copyright law and the "evil" the RIAA, was anything other than a ****ed jury increasing the damages award ever likely to be the outcome of this case? Short of a jury of 12 Slashdot copyright infringement advocates advocating jury nullification, I can't see how any other result was ever possible.

And still, that's ridiculous.

[passinginterest]

Well that's put a different slant on it. I was busy totting up what my missus would owe in that case and I reckon it's into the hundreds of millions, good luck to her with that!

I think I'll email this on to her just to give her a fright :D

[Wolfie]

I like this quote:

"She plans to appeal", he said.'

Too f*cking right she does!!! :D

[Dodge]

For the record she wasn't prosecuted for downloading songs, she was prosecuted for uploading and sharing songs

[anto1208]

I was wondering why it was so high for downloading a few songs but it makes more sense when i hear she was uploading. But a warning to people if they are downloading from torrent sites most torrent downloaders also upload what you are downloading at the same time. Not sure how likely you are to get done for this here but may be worth considering.

But i think the book should be thrown at anyone uploading Gloria Estefan.

[pete]

But a warning to people if they are downloading from torrent sites most torrent downloaders also upload what you are downloading at the same time. Not sure how likely you are to get done for this here but may be worth considering.


I think would to be a massive seeder to get prosecuted. I am sure they start at the top of the list & pick the serial offenders.

[Ringo]

The whole thing falls apart if people don't seed, so that would suit the record companies.